This special issue on hand-to-hand sports aims to analyse how collective identities and forms of group and community belonging are defined, strengthened, built, imagined or even denied in the sportive and social contexts in which hand-to-hand combat or wrestling disciplines are practised. Considering the wide-ranging cross-cultural distribution of combat and wrestling practices in very different cultures and societies across the contemporary world, this issue intends to provide a (not-exhaustive) comparison of practices originating in highly heterogeneous geographical, social and cultural contexts. Indeed, comparisons focus on specific practices (combat and wrestling activities) and their relationship with belonging. The contributing scholars have studied and reflected on a particular style of wrestling or combat practice and its links to social belonging and identity, whether it be expressed on regional or national, local or global, social or ethnic, institutional or ‘counter-cultural’, symbolic or concrete levels.
etnografia; urban studies; seconde generazion
No abstract
This special issue addresses ongoing transformations in several Italian cities, processes that are urban in nature, imply mobility, density and heterogeneity, and are also increasingly affecting communities that used to be considered 'folk societies'. This is particularly true of a country such as Italy, which is characterised by scattered urbanisation. The city, long a privileged subject of international academic research, is today the subject of an even greater interest from the most diverse social scientists: sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, political scientists, but also architects, urban planners and urban historians (Cancellieri and Scandurra 2012). It emerges clearly from the growing literature first that the city is not simply a background to social action, but rather the most complex form of human interdependence, namely an environment constituted by specific and structured processes (Hannerz 1980; Sassen 1994; Soja 2007). Second, it shows how certain re-territorialisation phenomena emphasise both the local dimension as a space of identity construction and the fact that, given the basic connection between democracy and the city (Bagnasco and Le Galès 2001), the quality of a democracy also depends on its attitude towards cities (Isin 2002; Mitchell 2003; Massey 2005). Our aim as editors of this special issue was to engage in a debate about the social and political tensions that play a role in the construction of citizenship in public space in Italian cities. As urban scholars, we were motivated by the awareness that 'classic' interpretations of urban tensions, such as the centre-periphery model, are no longer adequate. Segregation and social exclusion in many Italian cities today defy oversimplifying oppositions and it is increasingly difficult even to circumscribe these phenomena just geographically: projects undertaken by famous architects like Renzo Piano, for example, are mere ameliorative operations in our suburbs, but do not take into account the above-mentioned urban tensions, which deserve a more thorough analysis and, consequently, more complex and structured interventions (Piano 2014). While the disintegration of traditional forms of government resulting from these phenomena has exacerbated social inequality, on the other hand it has prompted new forms of appropriation of the city by its inhabitants (Satta 2014a; Satta and Scandurra 2014). Such new experiences and reappropriation practices were the starting point for and the context in which this research project on sport and public space was conceived and developed. Our intention, by choosing to focus on specific places in specific urban environments-gyms and sports fields, but also squares, parks and public spaces-is to investigate the role of sports practices and urban spaces in processes of citizenship construction in Italian cities. Our aim was
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